With Nvidia's new Titan X mega-card selling for a staggering $1,199, the gulf between mainstream graphics performance and the best-performing graphics card you can buy has never been wider. But as impressive as today's high-end cards are (the new Titan X packs in 12 billion transistors), far more people are looking to buy graphics cards on the low end of the performance spectrum than the higher tiers. That's especially true today, with the stratospheric rise of e-sports and fast-paced "twitch" gaming, which focuses on learned muscle memory and lightning-quick reactions, rather than games with the most demanding, eye-catching graphics. (Talk to devotees of League of Legends or DOTA 2 to see what we mean, if you can tear them away from their screens.)

AMD of course knows this, which is why it was a smart move for the company to focus on affordable cards in its latest line, the Radeon RX family, topping out with the under-$300, VR-ready Radeon RX 480. From the RX 480, it's a step down to the roughly-$199, 1080p-gaming-friendly Radeon RX 470, which we tested in PowerColor's overclocked Red Devil Radeon RX 470 trim, and finally down to the chip we're looking at here, the Radeon RX 460. Specifically, we're looking at PowerColor's Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 version of the RX 460, a $109.99 card that gets a very slight out-of-the-box clock speed bump, to 1,212MHz (12MHz more than AMD's stock 1,200MHz Boost Clock spec). The Red Dragon is otherwise an entry-level version of the RX 460 card, with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, a single fan, and the ability to get all the power it requires (AMD says less than 75 watts) from a PCI Express slot.

AMD aims the Radeon RX 460 specifically at e-sports enthusiasts and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) gamers, for an appealing mainstream price, with cards starting at $109. (That's also the going rate for the specific PowerColor card we tested.) For those kinds of gamers, and others happy to play more-demanding titles at 1080p and somewhat reduced settings, this card is an impressive performer. In our tests, the RX 460 far outpaced Nvidia's current card in this price range, the now two-and-a-half-year-old Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti. In our newest DirectX 12 tests, it also did quite well up against the more recent (and, as of this writing, currently much more expensive) GeForce GTX 950.

That's partially down to updates involving AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture in the company's new Polaris chips. But the real performance booster at play here is the shrink from a 28nm manufacturing process, on which both AMD and Nvidia had been stuck since around 2012, to 16nm in the case of Nvidia and 14nm with AMD's new cards. It turns out that roughly doubling the density of transistors (and therefore being able to fit more on a slice of silicon) goes a long way toward increasing the number of pixels you can push, as well as improving power efficiency.

[Editors' Note: Be aware that pricing and features for video cards based on a given graphics chip can vary, depending on the actual card maker. AMD and Nvidia make video "reference cards" based on their graphics processors, which they often send out for review. Third-party partners—MSI, Sapphire, EVGA, Asus, and many others—make and sell cards that often adhere closely to the design of these reference boards ("stock boards"), as well as versions with slight differences in port configuration, clocking, the amount and speed of onboard memory, and the cooling fans or heat sinks installed. Be sure the specs and ports/connections on any "partner" board you're looking at match what we've reviewed before making any assumptions. Here, we reviewed PowerColor's mainstream-aimed Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 with 2GB of GDDR5 memory; PowerColor and other card sellers also offer 4GB variants of the RX 460.]

The Basics: The Radeon RX 460

The Radeon RX 460 is the third AMD card based around the company's new "Polaris" graphics-processor line, built using its own process-node reduction to 14nm and using 3D-stacked FinFET transistors. It's not dissimilar to what Nvidia achieved with its 2016 "Pascal" line of cards that have been burning up benchmark tests and selling out everywhere, as well. At least as of this writing, though, Nvidia hadn't yet offered up a Pascal-based card at anywhere near the RX 460's price range. Here's a relative diagram of how the process technology has gotten smaller over the last decade or so, direct from AMD.

The Radeon RX 460 is based around what AMD is calling its "Polaris 11" chip, while the two previous cards were built around the more powerful Polaris 10 silicon. The image below should give you a general idea of how the two chips compare. (Note that the Radeon RX 470 does not tap the full potential of the Polaris 10 chip as defined here; neither does the RX 460 for Polaris 11, as we'll get into below.)

Beyond that, here's a look at AMD's reference designs for the three new cards, and how the company is positioning each one.

We're here, though, to talk about the Radeon RX 460. Here's a detailed spec list for what a RX 460 card should comprise, direct from AMD...

There's no denying that the Radeon RX 460, on paper and in the silicon, is a big step down from the Radeon RX 470, which admittedly starts at a much higher price of $179 (with the majority of RX 470 cards so far priced at or around $199). Compared to that card, with the Radeon RX 460 you get less than half the compute units (the Radeon RX 470 has 32, to the RX 460's 14); significantly less memory bandwidth (112GB per second with the RX 460, versus 211GB per second with the RX 470); and the number of stream processors drops from 2,048 on the Radeon RX 470 to 896 with the Radeon RX 460 we're looking at here.

AMD says that that all adds up to 2.2 teraflops of peak performance with the Radeon RX 460, as opposed to the "up to 4.9 teraflops" claim of what you'd get with the Radeon RX 470. As you might expect, then, there's a large gap in real-world performance between these two cards, as we'll see later in testing. But stepping down to the Radeon RX 460 also means you might not need a PCI Express power connector (although pay attention when shopping, because some higher-end overclocked variants of the RX 460 do require one).

Also, note that the Radeon RX 460's typical board power is rated at less than 75 watts, while the RX 470 is rated at 120 watts. In other words, if you're looking for a card to drop into an existing desktop that wasn't designed from the get-go to be a gaming tower, the Radeon RX 460 should let you just plug in the card, install drivers, and get to gaming (provided it physically fits inside the chassis). The Radeon RX 470, in contrast, may require a power-supply upgrade, or at least a SATA-to-PCIe power adapter.

PowerColor's Red Dragon Radeon RX 460: The Details

Unlike the PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 470, which came tricked out in demonic trim with a metal backplate, the company's Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 is comparatively tame, both inside and out.

As we mentioned earlier, the card gets a teeny-weeny out-of-the box overclock, to a top clock speed of 1,212MHz over AMD's listed 1,200MHz Boost Clock spec, and no PCI Express power connector is necessary here. And the design seems to reflect that clock conservatism, with no flames, red flair, or ominous occultist seals evident.

Aesthetically, the Red Dragon is also pretty standard, with a black cooler shroud and a single fan. We're sure the "red" here refers to the AMD chip inside (AMD's often referred to as "Team Red" by enthusiasts), but it would have been nice if PowerColor at least used a red fan or added some red trim, given the card's name.

At 8.25 inches long, the card is fairly compact, but not small enough to fit in most small Mini-ITX cases. At the launch of the Radeon RX 460, we didn't see any other retail cards available from AIB vendors that were small enough for these tiny case confines.

Still, given the modest power needs and the fact that AMD's own stock image for the card looks to be roughly the same size as the Mini-ITX-friendly Radeon R9 Nano, it seems highly likely that we'll see smaller variants of the Radeon RX 460 emerge in the coming weeks and months.

As for ports, the Radeon RX 460 in general (and this PowerColor card in particular) drops the multiple DisplayPorts of most higher-end AMD and Nvidia cards, making do with just one, along with an HDMI port and a dual-link DVI connector. Given the performance and price range, that's probably plenty of connectivity, although if you want to connect multiple screens for productivity work, you will probably need some adapters to make it all work.

It's also worth pointing out that much of the space underneath the PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 460's plastic shroud is empty. There's a circular metal heat sink atop the GPU, and a single fan atop that. But otherwise, there's not a whole lot going on under the hood, as you can see at least in part in the image below.

This empty space and seemingly unnecessarily large PCB isn't necessarily a bad thing. At no point did the PowerColor card get noisy or overly hot in our testing. But if your PC's case doesn't have a whole lot of empty internal space, or you just don't like the idea of an overly bulky card, know that, almost certainly, smaller versions of the RX 460 will come available.

Interestingly, PowerColor also offers up a version of this card with 4GB of GDDR5 memory; that card otherwise keeps clock speeds the same out of the box. And that card, at least according to the photos on PowerColor's site, adds a second fan, which seems hardly necessary given the otherwise identical specs. It's highly unlikely that adding an extra 2GB of memory would require twice the cooling potential. Also, if you're going to be gaming at a level where the extra RAM will actually be useful (raising resolutions above 1080p and/or installing high-resolution texture packs), you should almost certainly save up for at least a Radeon RX 470 card. The RX 460 just doesn't have enough pixel power to do those things well, extra RAM or no.

Performance Testing

We started off our testing with Futuremark's 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite's Fire Strike subtest.

Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance, and Futuremark has expanded Fire Strike nowadays into three subtests. In other recent reviews, we've looked at the "Ultra" test results, which are geared toward simulating gaming stresses at super-high 4K resolution. But as the Radeon RX 460 is definitely not aimed at 4K gaming, we focused instead on the less-demanding Fire Strike test.

Looking specifically at the Graphics Subscore, which is designed to isolate the graphics card, we see that the Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 delivers a score that isn't quite half that of the costlier Radeon RX 470, which we tested in its 4GB $199 Red Devil version. Considering that the Radeon RX 480 was only about 7 percent better here than the RX 470, the RX 460's score is a bit surprising. The RX 460 did manage to best the 2GB GeForce GTX 750 Ti by a bit over 20 percent, which isn't bad, though not exactly stunning given that Nvidia's card is now well into its terrible twos.

Tomb Raider (2013)

Okay, let's start with some older games. Here, we fired up the 2013 reboot of the classic title Tomb Raider, testing at Ultimate detail and three resolutions.

In this first real-world test, we see the Red Dragon RX 460 perform about how we'd expect given the last test, tacking on an extra 5 frames per second (fps) at 1080p compared to the GeForce GTX 750 Ti. But the older Radeon R7 370 did even better and, at the time of this writing in mid-August 2016, could be found in certain variants for about $10 more.

That R7 370 card, though, is based on very old silicon at this point, which first hit store shelves and test benches way back in 2012 in the form of AMD's Radeon HD 7850. We'd argue that the newer card still would be the better bet, especially if you're planning on sticking with it for a few years and playing lots of upcoming DirectX 12 games.

Sleeping Dogs

Next, we rolled out the very demanding real-world gaming benchmark test built into the title Sleeping Dogs…

Here again, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 outpaced the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, while losing out to the older Radeon R7 370. It's worth pointing out, though, that the Radeon R7 370 we tested was a tricked-out, overclocked model, while our RX 460 is pretty basic. A lesser R7 370 version would be closer to equal, we suspect.

Bioshock Infinite

The popular title Bioshock Infinite isn't overly demanding, as recent games go, but it's a still-popular one with stellar good looks. In its built-in benchmark program, we set the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF)…

We see more of the same here, as the Radeon RX 460 stayed solidly ahead of the GeForce GTX 750 Ti but gets trounced by both the Radeon R7 370 and GeForce GTX 950. It's also worth pointing out that the next card up the AMD stack, the Radeon RX 470, delivered double the performance at all three test resolutions. Then again, given it costs almost twice as much, it should.

Hitman: Absolution

Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still pretty hard on a video card.

On the last of our older games, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 showed its limitations, even with older titles, falling about 10fps short of the 30fps required for basic smooth game play. (Dialing back settings such as the harsh 8x MSAA will get you over 30fps at 1080p with ease, though.) It did, though, hold on to its consistent lead over the older GeForce GTX 750 Ti. Things get quite a bit more interesting for the RX 460 once we step up to newer games, however. So let's do just that.

Far Cry Primal

Now, on to a newer title. Ubisoft's latest open-world first-person hunting game is one of the most demanding titles we use, thanks to its lush foliage, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments.

On this first of our newer titles, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 pulled a little further ahead of the GeForce GTX 750 Ti at 1080p, which, given this level of performance, is the only resolution that really matters. What's more interesting: AMD's latest card gets almost within reach of the GeForce GTX 950 for the first time here. It won't be the last.

Ashes of the Singularity

Oxide's Ashes of the Singularity is a bit of a departure as a benchmark, as it's a real-time strategy title, rather than a first-person shooter or a third-person action title. Due to the planet-scale nature of its battle scenes, with hundreds of onscreen tanks, ships, and other implements of future warfare, it can be extremely demanding at high settings. And because of the plethora of rendered units, this game is also much more CPU-bound—especially at high settings and resolutions—than most other recent games.

We tested AoTS in both DX11 and DX12 modes, with the DX11 mode up first. We also stepped down to the less-demanding "Standard Preset," because cards in this range tend to struggle to run this test at all on the more-demanding "Crazy" mode.

While the results were much closer across the board here, the Red Dragon RX 460 again bested the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, while not straying far from the GeForce GTX 950 at 1080p.

Grand Theft Auto V

As one of the most popular game franchises on the planet, Grand Theft Auto really needs no introduction. The "V" installment took a lot longer than many expected to land on the PC. But when it finally did in early 2015, it brought with it a number of graphical improvements and tweakable visual settings that pushed the game far beyond its console roots.

We don't have a chart for this benchmark, because the Red Dragon RX 460 lacked enough video memory to run the test at our usual top-tier settings. But stepping back to medium settings at 1080p, the Red Dragon card delivered a smooth 103fps, which again was slightly ahead of the 99.8fps turned in by the GeForce GTX 750 Ti at the same settings.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft rises once again in the early 2016 iteration of Square Enix's long-running action franchise. As our hero works to unfold an ancient mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) ahead of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather system, and the complexities of Lara's wind-tousled hair, add to the game's visual complexity.

The Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 looked its worst so far here, falling for the first time a few frames behind the GeForce GTX 750 Ti at 1080p, and well behind the older R7 370. But as we'll soon see, the card redeems itself if you flip the switch to DirectX 12.

Hitman (2016)

The newest game in the Hitman pantheon finds Agent 47 turning over a new leaf, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery as a teacher at a school for underprivileged children. Just kidding; he kills loads of people in this one, just like the rest. It does offer gorgeous graphics in both DX11 and DX12 varieties, though. We'll tackle the former first.

The tables turn significantly in favor of the Red Dragon RX 460 on this test, where it not only pulls about 33 percent ahead of the of the GTX 750 Ti, but also leaves the GTX 950 behind, and nips at the heels of the GeForce GTX 960! When we wrote this, the GeForce GTX 960 was still selling for about $200. So that's a big upset for the new AMD/PowerColor card. And as we head into our DirectX 12 results, it won't be the last.

DirectX 12 Performance

It's tough to get any real general sense of DirectX 12 performance at this point. When we wrote this in August 2016, only a few titles were available with DirectX 12 support and reliable benchmarkability under Windows 10. Running these games, anecdotally, we saw no graphical differences between the titles running at DX11 versus DX12 settings. And in terms of frame rates, in some instances, titles running under DX12 offered performance gains, but elsewhere we saw lesser performance.

In other words, you should take the below results for what they are: early returns. DirectX 12 is still in its very early stages, and those developers who have implemented it have yet to smooth over the cracks. We'll have to wait at least a few more months to say for sure how much of an advantage DX12 offers, and whether it sways things in favor of AMD or Nvidia in any substantive way. Still, because DX12 is cutting-edge tech, it's worth taking a look at what it and its competition can do with Microsoft's latest gaming API today.

Rise of the Tomb Raider (Under DX12)

This sequel to 2013's Tomb Raider is one of the first AAA titles to offer DirectX 12 support. We used the preset "Very High" for testing.

We noted a performance anomaly here, as our PowerColor review card of the Radeon RX 470 outpaced the 8GB Radeon RX 480 at 1080p, and somewhat less so at 1440p (2,560x1,440 resolution). But the Red Dragon RX 460 gets to near-playable frame rates (a full 10fps jump from our DirectX 11 results on the same test), trouncing both the GeForce GTX 750 Ti and the GeForce GTX 950 in the process, and once again pulling just ahead of the GTX 960 here.

Hitman (2016, Under DX12)

The newest Hitman title also offers up a DX12 graphics option in its benchmark that, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, looked identical to our eyes to the DX11 version.

The Red Dragon RX 460's impressive DirectX 12 abilities continued here, although the margins were a bit less. The newest AMD/PowerColor offering again pulled just ahead of the GeForce GTX 960 (although it's close enough to call it a tie), while besting the two lower-end Nvidia-based offerings. And interestingly, the older Radeon R7 370 lost out here (as it did in the previous test, to a lesser extent, as well). This shows that opting for an older, similarly priced AMD card might be short-sighted.

It's also clear from this chart that the Radeon RX 460 isn't really up to the task of 1080p gaming at high detail settings with demanding games, even under the best of circumstances. Demanding games will still be playable if you step back to medium settings. If you want no-compromise 1080p gaming and smooth frame rates, the Radeon RX 470 should be your baseline card here in mid-2016.

Ashes of the Singularity (Under DX12)

Last, we ran the Ashes of the Singularity strategy benchmark using DX12, under the same Standard preset that we ran under DX11.

Things don't looks quite as impressive on our final test for the Red Dragon, as it lost out to the GeForce GTX 960 by a couple of fps. But the new AMD/PowerColor card still managed to just about tie the GeForce GTX 950, outpace the older, overclocked Radeon R7 370, and leave the similarly priced GeForce GTX 750 Ti quite a ways behind.

Conclusion

AMD's Radeon RX 460 is an interesting card, in that its performance versus the competition is impressive, if mixed. In nearly all our tests, it managed to outpace the years-old (but still competitive) Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti. But on older test titles, the Radeon RX 460 isn't as impressive as we'd expect—at least compared to the performance leaps we've otherwise seen across the board from all the other new cards built using the smaller manufacturing process technology (both from AMD and Nvidia).

On those titles, if all you really care about is frame rates, the older Radeon R7 370 and GeForce GTX 950 put up stiff competition for not much more money. When we wrote this, both could be found for around $120 to $130. If that were the whole story, we'd peg AMD's lowest-end Polaris-based card as something of a disappointment.

But step up to newer titles, especially those few that supported DirectX 12 when we wrote this, and the card (specifically the PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 that we tested) makes a surprisingly strong turnaround, leaving the GeForce GTX 750 Ti behind and pulling ahead of the GeForce GTX 950. At times, it even jousted well with the GeForce GTX 960, a card that, when we wrote this, was still almost twice the $109 price of our PowerColor RX 460 card. And if you're buying a card, particularly one in this mainstream price bracket, you'll probably want to hang on to it for a few years, when many more DirectX 12 titles will be available. If that sounds like you, the Radeon RX 460 is the best card you can currently buy in this price range.

All that being said, support for DirectX 12 is still pretty nascent at this writing, and we will doubtless see future titles that give more advantage to Nvidia's cards. We would also not be surprised at all to see Team Green release its own competing 1000-series card in this price range (perhaps a GeForce GTX 1050?), or just drop the price on the GeForce GTX 950 and GeForce GTX 960 so that they're more competitive. Nvidia certainly has plenty of options for stealing AMD's thunder here.

Also, it's tough to make definitive card recommendations at this point. All the current-generation cards from both Nvidia and AMD deliver huge performance gains over previous-gen options at similar prices (although the Radeon RX 460 somewhat less so). But for the several weeks before this writing, finding any of these cards in stock near their entry-level price points has been difficult to impossible. That leaves us in a position where we don't think most buyers should opt for an older card, unless it's at a severely reduced price. But finding a card based on Polaris or Pascal tech might involve closely watching stock on a site like Nowinstock.net until one shows up, or paying an inflated price for a more premium model (or both).

Stocks of higher-end GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards seem to have improved dramatically in the last week or so, but that's of little use to gamers shopping at or around the $100 range. Even the Radeon RX 480 was out of stock on Newegg.com when we wrote this, and that card costs about twice as much as the RX 460. To be fair, though, RX 470 cards were widely available at or around $199.

Still, judging the comparative value of any new-in-2016 card is a little tough at this point, as we are working off projected prices that mostly aren't behaving as projected in the real world. Also, the DirectX 12 games that paint the Radeon RX 460 in the best light are still quite limited and trickling out slowly.

We'd definitely opt for this card over an older Radeon R7 370 or GeForce GTX 950 that costs a little more. But it's tough to predict the card's future performance based off just a few games. In other words, if you have a card that's at least able handle the titles you want to play today, the best bet might be to wait a few months and see how this cavalcade of graphics uncertainties shakes out.

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About the Author

Matt is a self-described Net nerd, gadget geek, and general connoisseur of off-kilter culture. A graduate of the first class of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, his work has appeared in Popular Science, Consumer Reports, Smithsonian, and elsewhere in the ether. You'll often find him writing while walking on his treadmill desk, surrounded by ... See Full Bio

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX...

PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 460 (2GB)

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